


"it's a social experiment" - Cole Sprouse, 2012

by Geeneelee



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Comedy, Gen, based on a real thing you can look up, don't butter your burns, engineer is a Scientist, i'm the first person to tag anything engineer & sniper apparently, medic is a dick, only teen for swearing, sniper is a sad and awkward man, this is my first work in this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 20:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geeneelee/pseuds/Geeneelee
Summary: When Engie drops an f-bomb, something mildly interesting has probably happened. Sniper investigates, poorly.





	"it's a social experiment" - Cole Sprouse, 2012

**Author's Note:**

> no betas we die like scouts

“Mother hubbard, dang nabit, nagit, nabbity-“

A loud clang rang out, and a hard thud almost immediately afterwards.

“-FUCK!” Engie bellowed, loud enough for everyone in the common area to hear. Pyro gasped in shock. Or, at the very least, that’s what it looked like when their hands flew where their mouth should approximately be and they made a strange breathy noise. Others made mild expressions of surprise at the expletive. Expletives were common on the base, but not from their engineer. (Pyro’s swearing, or lack thereof, was again, a mystery.)

A few expectant glances flew around the room, trying to assign responsibility to investigate. Scout held up his hands to show the gum stuck to them, his face, his hair, his shirt, his hat, etc etc. Heavy and Medic looked down meaningfully at the chess game they were engaged in. Demoman whimpered into the table, trying to avoid direct light. Soldier pointed at the hole he was digging behind the vending machine, as if that was all the explanation that was needed for why he couldn’t go. (In a way, it was.) Pyro braided barbed wire together as if it were flowers for a crown, and Spy did not dignify the others with a response.

Which left Sniper, hunched over his coffee cup, without an excuse not to go. He mumbled the usual litany of Australian curses into his mug and got up.

 

He found Engie sulking in his workshop, sporting the beginnings of a burn blister on his hand and an ugly bruise to accompany it. He was putting…butter on it, of all things?

“Um. In the mood for some hand meat? I could get you some pepper, and salt, and, err…” Sniper trailed off, and tried to end the sentence smoothly with an awkward chuckle.

Engie looked at him like he had grown a second head. “Slim... what?”

Sniper pointed at the angry looking burn, now glistening with dairy fats.

The Texan laughed. “Oh, heh! It’s an trick my old man taught me. Just spread some butter on a burn, it’ll absorb the heat right up. ‘Course, my granddaddy thought he was being a fool,” Engie said, with a nostalgic smile on his face. The smile tightened after a moment. “’Course, my granddaddy was usually right, and not my pa...” He frowned at his hand, and instead went to the sink to wash his hands with cool water. “Anyway, what can I do for you, Slim?”

Sniper shrugged. “Just wanted to see what all the commotion was about. What happened?”

Engie sighed, looking balefully at the device on the counter he had been standing by. It looked almost like a teleporter, but with even more wings, and several flashing lights, and a lot of other things that Sniper couldn’t even hope to identify. Only one of the wings, however, was pointing up, and at an awkward angle no less, with sparks periodically flashing. Even if he couldn’t identify the parts, he was fairly certain that that wasn’t what it was supposed to do, and was probably why Engie had been injured.

The man with 11 Ph.Ds. gestured to the machine, and began explaining. “See, this here is an improvement on the teleporter, a matter transmitter-“

(Sniper had no idea what the difference was)

“-the difference being, the molecular structure is disassembled completely allowing for supersonic speeds-“

(that didn’t explain anything and in fact sounded kind of alarming)

“-and while I was working on the particle disassemblers, which require a downright enormous energy output you can understand-”

(Sniper did not understand)

“-and I was trying to hook up the beta switch to the transformer, which will allow the power to evenly flow to the two sides simultaneously AND instantaneously, which will circumvent the issue of super-polarization of the experimental particles, allowing a complete recreation of the original matter without the use of quantum reimaging and data structures-“

It was at this point that Sniper finally gave up on pretending to himself he understood what was being said, and instead nodded sympathetically, with breaks to sip his coffee, for five minutes straight, waiting for the end of the explanation. Six minutes in he thought he was in luck, but it turned out that Engie had just decided to get the diagram out from under his workbench so he could point at the offending structures within the device. It took another thirteen minutes for the man to cease.

Quickly, before Engie could think of another thing to explain, Sniper cut in. “Why don’t you go ask Medic about healing that hand of yours? That’d do the job right quick.”

Engie scowled. “He and I are having a disagreement. I think that experimental anesthetic he’s been pumping us with will have bad long-term usage effects, but Medic, the man who no longer has so much as a medical license, thinks he knows better than me, the man with 11 Ph.Ds., including one in medical engineering.”

Sensing another opportunity for a jargon-heavy tirade, Sniper tried to think of some way to cheer up the Texan. He thought of it.

“You know…my friend’s dad growing up once told me a hell of a joke. Had his kid cracking up every time.”

“I thought you didn’t have any friends growing up.”

Sniper tried not to feel insulted, and failed. He continued anyway. “Well, not many, but this boy was one of those kids. You understand.”

(Now it was Engie, who in fact, did not understand.)

“Whenever I was feeling down in the dumps, Reggie’s dad used to tell me this joke. “A woman goes to take a bath, but when she pulls back the curtain, there’s a polar bear inside. She says, ‘what are you doing in my bathtub?’ and the polar bear says ‘no soap, radio.’” Now isn’t that something?” The Australian smiled expectantly.

They sat in perfect silence for a long moment.

“Slim, that doesn’t make a lick of sense. That’s not funny at all.”

The smile stayed awkwardly in place. “Oh. I didn’t get it either, I was hoping you would.”

The Medic chose this moment to pop in through the doorway, smiling maniacally. “It was a social experiment!”

They both stared agape at the unexpected doctor.

“I sensed my medical skills being doubted so I came right away. Anyway, “No soap radio” is a social experiment with at least three people, where one person tells the joke, and another, the confederate, is already in the know about what is happening and laughs along at the nonsensical punchline. The experiment is to see if the remaining subjects laugh along out due to a desire for conformity, or not.”

Sniper suddenly felt a lot less warmly about his old friend and his dad. “So did I pass?”

The Medic cackled and left without any sort of explanation. The matter transmitter’s final wing finally jerked downwards, causing a small explosion that singed the back of Sniper and Engie’s head. All in all, a typical day.


End file.
